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On December 1941, 12, for the first time since the siege, the Military Council of the Leningrad Front and the party's state committee decided:

Increased population rations: 50 grams for workers, 75 grams for extremely frail workers, dependents and children

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Leningrad is still under siege and holding out.

The convoy was carrying out a suicide transport on the ice road of Lake Ladoga.The trucks were driving dangerously along the marked route, and they might be attacked by German artillery fire at any time. It seemed that every day, cars fell into the ice cracks; drivers had to take off their gloves in the severe cold in order to hold the steering wheel tightly, and their fingers were frozen. I had to lose consciousness, and the sweat in my palms quickly glued my skin to the cold steering wheel.Someone in the market on the ice waved a flag and shouted to them: "Come on, the people of Leningrad need you!" But everyone understood that they were not standing there to welcome the hero's triumphant return with enthusiasm and hope. He will quickly put on a straight face and strictly record the workload of the transport team. This document will soon appear on the desk of the People's Committee.

The fuel is almost gone, the radiators have no warmth, the old wood-burning stove has been searched out from the junk pile, and almost all the wooden furniture has been removed to keep warm.The flour used to make bread is mixed with sawdust and cotton wool. People who are still able to survive risk being bombed by German planes to dig potatoes in the frozen land in the outskirts. Stray cats, stray dogs, and even sparrows and mice are almost extinct on the streets. There were even rumors of cannibalism.

Due to the lack of vegetables, scurvy was extremely prevalent, a large number of old people and children died, and people suffered from various malnutrition diseases; mothers had no milk, and young girls gave birth to gray hair. In the last month of 1941, as many as 5 citizens died of starvation.

In order to protect it from bombing damage, statues in the city were buried deep in the ground, bronze horsemen were hidden in piles of sandbags, and resplendent church roofs were sprinkled with ash.

However, life goes on.

Works by "emerging artists" are exhibited in art galleries, theaters perform during seasons; in the basement of the Hermitage, professors meet by candlelight to write speeches for literary lectures.Women organized patrols on the streets, and posted posters of "blood for blood, life for life" next to the bombed-out buildings; by the end of 1941, the arsenal had produced tens of thousands of guns, millions of The Soviet army around the city tried its best to protect the crumbling city, and the military committee even transferred the grain stored in the Red Navy warehouse and the rusks stored by the field troops to the city.

It seems that everyone is trying to believe that hope is immortal and that good things will finally see the light of day.

On the eve of the New Year, the girls of the troupe performed a dance drama in the auditorium of a school near the army garrison. They danced parts of "Flamingo" and "God's Horse".Compared with usual, they didn't dance very well, but the soldiers still applauded enthusiastically until the faces of the girls were flushed with such enthusiasm.

Kulik stood behind the cotton curtain at the side door of the auditorium, raising a small gap to look at the stage.The sky outside the house had long since darkened, and the corridor behind him was already dark. Compared with the auditorium with clusters of candles, it looked like a brightly lit palace.

Although katia is also a ballet dancer, even when in love kulik wasn't as often imagined, waiting backstage with a bouquet of flowers; he'd only done that once, and that romance gave birth to their decision to be there for each other marriage.

Then someone asked him, "Why are you here?"

Kulik recognized that it was tarasova.

Five minutes later they were in the car.

Tarasova took out a finely carved tin cigarette case from his pocket, but the cigarettes inside were homemade, "Would you like one? It can lift your spirits."

Kulik smiled as if to refuse, but finally took one.

He was playing with the cigarette in his hand, and Tarasova asked, "Does Katia still smoke?"

"As far as I know, she doesn't smoke."

"Oh," Tata nodded, exhaling a smoke ring.

Kulik said lightly: "Are you trying to say that even now, I still know very little about her?"

"I was quite embarrassed at the time," Mrs. Ta recalled to Liza, "I don't know if this is your father's unique sense of humor for me."

Kulik didn't seem to feel any embarrassment, he turned to Tatai and asked, "I'll borrow a fire from you."

A little bit of scarlet light lit up in the night, reflecting on the face of the young lieutenant colonel, like the flush on his cheeks.

He held the cigarette and sniffed it, and then took a puff carefully, as if casually.

"It should be smoked more delicately, this is real tobacco," Tarasova thought, and she also lit a cigarette, and she saw that Kulik was not good at it.

The tobacco leaves for making cigarettes were given to her by the luthier in the theater. After the war broke out, there was nowhere to buy tobacco leaves. People used substitutes such as dried maple leaves of hops.Rough horse tobacco has also become a luxury at the moment.

"I didn't expect you to smoke," she said.

"why?"

Tarasova said sincerely: "I think you are a person with strong self-control compared to your age."

Kulik smiled and said, "Thanks if that's a compliment."

"I learned to smoke when I was in the base camp, and it was also the season," he said suddenly, "I stayed in the staff room. I wasn't on duty that day, but I didn't want to go back to the dormitory. The man on duty was a Georgian. He He used Pravda as cigarette paper, and rolled Mahe cigarettes. He said to me, boy, have one."

"It smells like rotten wood." He shook his head childishly, as if he didn't like it very much. "When I took the first sip, I choked up my tears."

He didn't expect that Mahe cigarettes would smell like rotten wood in his mouth, and he thought of coffins for a moment, and he choked on a few puffs in a fit of strong disgust and a little fear.When the old staff officer laughed and came to help him pat his back, he also laughed at him for making himself so embarrassed just after taking the first puff, as if he had cried a lot.

"Then the staff officer talked to me about his two daughters and the farm in Georgia. I suddenly had a nostalgic feeling for Moscow," kulik continued, holding the steering wheel. No idea of ​​starting a family."

"It's very unusual for me, I don't think I like Moscow, I'm bored with the rules there, I always yearn for freedom, I even envy the Decembrists exiled to Siberia, regardless of their Is there a wife who is sincerely accompanying me; I always want to stay away from Moscow, but there seems to be something tied to me: I joined the cavalry army but went back to study Frunze, I went to the Far East to serve but was transferred back to the base camp; And now, I came to Leningrad from Smolensk..." His voice stopped abruptly.

He rested his forehead on the back of his hand holding the steering wheel, and the burning cigarette butt was still caught between his fingers, almost burning his hair.

"I stubbed out the cigarette and put my hand on his head," Tarasova recalled to Liza. "For a guy like your dad, it might seem embarrassing and upsetting for me to do it, but I did it, and it was very Naturally; as he told me about it frankly."

"You're going back to Moscow?" Tarasova asked.

"Yes," the voice seemed to come from the bottom of the valley, it seemed to be talking to itself, and the words were uncharacteristically redundant, "this will be another act of indiscipline, which may not be approved at all-but I've got to go back; but it might make it easier for people, and maybe they—all of them have had enough of all my presumptuous fantasies..."

Tarasova wasn't quite sure if she understood what she meant, she could only reassure: "No, it's not like that, it just seems like you're torturing yourself all the time."

He looked up, a strand of hair still stuck to his forehead. "Do you think so?" He seemed a little moved to ask.

"Oh...you see, I don't really understand..."

He stubbornly interrupted: "No, you have to tell me."

Tarasova pondered for a while to make sure what she said was true: "According to my limited observation, it's like this..."

Kulik leaned back in the seat, his eyelashes fluttering on the roof of the car.

He forced himself to be calm and said, "You brought me back to the night we just talked about."

Tarasova became sensitively alert: "Why do you want to go back?"

She asked, but got no response.She finally couldn't help but asked bluntly: "Is it because something happened to Katia?"

Kulik stood up silently, and he put out the cigarette butt.

His behavior surprised Ta too, and she blurted out: "Why do you look so guilty?"

Before she finished speaking, the young man in front of him suddenly regained his calm and reserved attitude as a lieutenant colonel's staff officer: "Please don't abuse your imagination to test my patience."

Ta was taken aback by the sudden rudeness: "What are you talking about, Ilia?"

"Tatiana Tarasova," he said calmly, "you're always asking questions like this, it's annoying."

With that said, he opened the car door and jumped down, leaving the old lady who was completely unresponsive in the car.

That night, it was another officer who drove Tatai back to the theater.Since then, she has never seen Iliakulik again.

Lieutenant Colonel Iliakulik suddenly disappeared from Leningrad.His colleagues didn't even realize this situation at first, until a staff officer mentioned this name one day after the New Year, and Fejuninsky waved his hand coldly and said: "Lieutenant Colonel Kulik has returned to Moscow, and now there is no such person here. .”

Sasha knew about it on the first Sunday after New Years.He was called by Zhulin to Victor Kudriavtsev's house for dinner, and Zhulin said on the phone: "I haven't seen you for a long time, and by the way, it's a New Year's celebration."

They mentioned kulik at the dinner table.

"Ilia asked me to thank you in private before leaving," Zhulin said to Kudriavtsev, "He hoped you would not be too angry with him."

"He's already gone? He acted quickly." Old Victor seemed very angry. "I just hope he won't be angry with me in the future."

"Why do you say that?" Zhulin was busy trying to smooth things over, "After all, this is his and his wife's first child, and he encountered such a dangerous situation."

"Oh, it seems that such a responsible behavior towards the family is very appreciated by Your Excellency."

Zhulin smiled and said: "Yes, caring and loyalty to a wife are indeed a valuable quality in marriage."

Kudriavtsev snorted.

Zhulin didn't seem particularly embarrassed: "But then again, Kulik was able to transfer back to Moscow because you sent a letter to Platov."

Kudriavtsev put down his knife and fork and sighed: "So what if I don't do anything, Ilia will do what she wants to do anyway. I have no right to say that it is wrong for him to do so now, but leave at such a time Leningrad, leaving before the counteroffensive began, his previous work was completely wiped out—and I don't understand why he didn't return to Moscow with Zhukov in the autumn?"

Zhulin also agreed with a sigh: "He missed both opportunities—it could even be said that he gave them up."

While the two of them were sighing, Sasha was quietly drinking the soup with her head down, as if she didn't hear anything.

Later, they left the old department head's house, chatted together and walked to the street before saying goodbye. Zhulin walked a few steps, turned around and saw Sasha still standing there, "Go back!" he said loudly, Sasha nodded and waved to him with a smile.

"Go back," Sasha repeated in her mind.Maybe it was because the weather was too cold, he felt that his body was hard to be controlled by his thoughts, as if he had become a wandering soul, and what he saw and felt seemed to be isolated in another world.

This is all a dream.

When Kulik came to him on the night before New Year's Eve, he had actually told him "I'm going back to Moscow." But he didn't expect it to be so soon, just like how many times they got together in a hurry before, without even a decent farewell.

He said: "I'm here to pick up the choreographer of the troupe and go to the auditorium, but it's still early. Let me tell you, I'm going back to Moscow."

Sasha froze for a moment: "Back to Moscow? But why now?"

Kulik was silent for a while and said: "My wife had an accident during pregnancy, and it may be dangerous during childbirth, so I should go back."

Sasha said softly, "Oh, that's right." He paused for a moment and said, "Yes, you should go back."

It was around 5 o'clock in the afternoon, they were standing by the outer wall of Sasha's dormitory apartment, and the night had already cast the first shadow.

They stood in the shadows, Sasha kicking the snow, Kulik motionless.

There was no moon that night.Like that night in the Siberian hospital that year.

It was also the day before the New Year, and the army had just finished a three-day tactical training. It was already dark when Kulik arrived at the hospital.

Probably because no one wants to celebrate New Year in a hospital surrounded by bleak surroundings, and the wards are almost empty.

"You don't need to come here in such a hurry, it's too hard," Sasha grabbed the crutch beside the bed and said, "I'll go talk to the head nurse and find you a bed to sleep for a while."

"No need," the man insisted, still trying to force himself, "it's nothing."

He sat in the chair next to Sasha's bed, looking energetic.

But soon, he fell asleep on the back of the chair.

The lights in the ward were not turned on, and it gradually became dark inside and outside the room.

Sasha jokingly thought: "Now it's a good time to bet, if he wakes him up immediately, can he draw a defense map around the city in the dark."

He called "Ilia", Kulik moved slightly, but still fell asleep and ignored him.

Sasha's eyes have long adapted to the dark environment, and he can easily see the outline of Kulik's face beside him. His fair complexion seems to be like marble under the faint light, with a cool reflection.

Sasha suddenly had an idea.

Sasha sat up straight from the pillow on her back, put her hands on the bed, and moved her body towards the edge of the bed.He struggled to get up with his arms for support, and leaned towards kulik.

Kulik sat there seemingly unaware that someone was slowly approaching him.But just before the lips touched Kulik's cheek, Sasha saw that the eyelashes under the closed eyelids trembled slightly, just like a child who pretends to be asleep often shows his feet; and the breath of the two of them seemed to be suddenly constricted in one In the cramped small space, it suddenly magnifies like the waves of the Siberian River lapping on the embankment.

Sasha paused for a moment, the tip of his nose almost touched the soft down on the young man's face.

He understood that the nature of the matter in front of him had fundamentally changed from the simple thought he had when he got up.

Ilia is undoubtedly waiting, as long as he moves forward by one centimeter, this will be an unambiguous statement and confession, and no matter what shocking stories happen afterwards, it will be a matter of course.

Ilia's sleepy face reminded him of apples with ruddy branches, the oldest temptation and crime.

So at the next moment, Sasha quietly retreated to her position just like when she came.

He was in a slightly sour mood, but he didn't regret it, he knew he had to do this; at this moment, even though he couldn't help but ask himself over and over again: "Do you want to say something?" But the answer was clear in his heart .

For nearly a decade, they'd had countless opportunities to "say something" and none of them had said anything explicitly, so why this time?They all know very well that nothing can be changed between them.

And even if you return to the origin, maybe everything will still be on the same track.

That night in Siberia, when his lips stopped a centimeter from his cheek—their half-life entanglement had practically set the tone ever since.

That moment and the moments that followed—the initiative was in his hands, whenever, if he ever took a step forward—but what he did was avoidance and silence, which he would not regret, In fact, that's all he can do.He didn't dare to judge, or even imagine, what the choice of following his heart would bring about.

In fact, he himself didn't think there was any shame in such emotion; taking a step back, he realized early on that he didn't do it because he liked men, he just liked this Iliusha.

If they were just two foresters in Siberia isolated from the world, he could have allowed himself to be at the mercy of his emotions; but unfortunately, their identities made it impossible for them to escape the judgment of the world every step they took—Soviet Professional Soldiers There is absolutely no tolerance for such blemishes on your resume.

They chose such a path, even if it is full of thorns, they have to grit their teeth to finish it; they have to make some regrettable choices, but some things can only be hidden in the years, and they will stop at their lips and teeth.

Forget each other in the rivers and lakes.

Just like the river of life, no one ever knows where it will flow.